Then I crossed to the pier and trudged up the gangplank after my father and stepmother.

Up on the forecastle, Alessandra exchanged goodbyes with Sir Perrault. I couldn’t catch their words, but my stepmother spoke in low, icy tones, and Perrault looked pale—almost seasick, though we’d hardly left solid ground. I almost pitied him.

Almost.

Godmother Althea and my father waited a little space away. On my way to Daddy’s side, Alessandra intercepted me. “You couldn’t change?”

Heat splotched my chest and cheeks. “I like this dress.” I gripped one elbow with my free hand, my shoe dangling from the fingers of the other. “And I was short on time.”

“And a shoe.” She rolled her eyes again and nodded at Perrault. He carried a slim folder. “Those are your suitors. Prepare to meet them as you see fit. But fail the Council, and the Council may fail you.” She glanced at my father, looking thin and breakable in the early light. “I think you know what’s at stake.”

I clenched my fingers around my arm, staring first at the folder in Perrault’s hands, then at Alessandra’s abdomen. At the child she’d made my enemy before I could ever become its friend.

“I’ll do what has to be done,” I said.

Not that I knew what that was. Not that I knew what it would cost. Not that the words would mean the same thing to Alessandra that they meant to me.

But when I looked at my father, at my godmother, at the little brother or sister I already cared for, at the banks of the land whose absence I already felt in my bones—I knew I’d do what was necessary to come home and protect them.

Alessandra put her hands on her stomach and turned away, eyes victorious. “We’ll see,” she called over her shoulder.

That was all the goodbye I got.

After she was gone, I wobbled to Daddy’s side, and for a moment, there was no sound between us but the gentle lap of waves against the Beholder’s hull and the words trapped in his throat.

Abruptly, he pulled me into a tight hug. I stifled a whimper and hung on to him, gripping his reedy frame, wondering if they’d still send me away with this ship full of strangers if I never let go.

“Be careful,” he said quietly. “And get home, quick as you can.”

A tremor twitched his shoulder, and he released me. I fought tears, furiously memorizing his face—the green eyes and freckled skin like mine, the graying stubble he hadn’t shaved this morning.

When he kissed my forehead and followed my stepmother off the Beholder, I watched him walk away, head bowed. I swallowed and blinked to keep my tears from falling.